Why did small business owner and gamer dad Mike Hoye spend the last few weeks hand-tweaking the text in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker so that the main character was referred to as a girl instead of a boy? As he put it, “I’m not having my daughter growing up thinking girls don’t get to be the hero.”

Hoye and his three-and-a-half year old daughter Maya have recently been playing Wind Waker together, but Hoye was bothered by the fact that even players who change the protagonist's name to something other than "Link"—which the game allows—always get addressed as though they are male. The main character is always referred to with words like “master,” “my lad,” and “swordsman.” Because Hoye's daughter can't yet read, Hoye has been reading the on-screen dialogue aloud to her and diligently transliterating the gendered language from male to female on the fly as they traverse the game's Great Sea together.

To make this process smoother, Hoye eventually decided to hack away at the actual text of the story, producing a female-oriented version by altering the game's data files. According to his blog post on the project, Hoye took a GameCube disk image (.GCM) of Wind Waker and dug into it with a hex editor. He changed all story text and dialogue by hand, then tested his work by playing the game file in the Dolphin GameCube emulator.

The modifications proved a bit tricky, since the new female-oriented wording had to be a byte-for-byte alteration of the original; even throwing in "she" in place of "he" would mess things up. So Hoye got creative, using words like “milady” in place of “my lad” and “master."

“Sentences need to be changed or reworded just because 'young lady' is one character longer than 'young man,' line breaks need to be in about the right places, that sort of thing,” Hoye told Ars via e-mail.

The gendered storyline that Nintendo gave Wind Waker wasn’t inappropriate; Link is, and always has been, a boy. But if parents want to introduce their daughter to video games, there’s a noticeable shortage of good female main characters to round out the experiences, stories, and situations that unfold. Furthermore, no one should have to deny their daughters a healthy education in the wonders of Zelda because male-oriented text might deal a blow to girls' sense of self-worth.

Would playing Wind Waker as a male protagonist really cause problems for Hoye's daughter? Hoye doesn't know and says he "probably can’t know. I did this because playing through Wind Waker is something my daughter and I like doing together, and because I think Maya deserves to have the game address her as herself. She's not an NPC, and Dad's favorite pastime shouldn't treat girls like second-class citizens.”

Not that such changes are simple. Hoye told Ars that the changes took about “two or three solid days of work, an hour or two at a time over the last few weeks.”

Hoye has made the changes available as a patch to the Wind Waker .GCM file, which must be applied using a tool called "xdelta3," he writes. The modified game needs to be played within the Dolphin emulator, but Hoye speculated to us that it might be possible to burn the game back onto a disc such that it would be compatible with the console again. In any event, Hoye now has a female protagonist for Wind Waker—and you can see the results of his work above.

Promoted Comments

As a male, for the longest time I never but much consideration into these things. When I had my first child, for a while we thought it was going to be a girl (Turned out to be a boy). During that time I started looking at my hobbies and ways to encorperate a girl into them and found how much is overlooked for young girls.

There are almost no female superheroes sutible for a small girl, and of the few there are, there is NO merchandise for. Unless she wants to be a princess there aren't many videogame options for a young girl either.

This is one of those things that once I've seen, I can't unsee it. I notice this gap in almost everything my son gets interested in, and it really bothers me. We own dozens of little superhero squad/ DC universe playschool figures and the only woman I can even find to buy is Catwoman.

I'm glad this Dad found a way to tilt the scale a little.

1 post | registered Nov 8, 2012

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston

390 Reader Comments

@ telekinesisSomeone definitely had a bad experience didn't they?Your sole decent point is that women are vastly less likely to be conscripted - presumably women in the military is more likely to happen in more civilised countries where there is no conscription.I am just going to check South Korea - wiki says male conscription only. East Asia does tend to have quite bad gender relations (personal experience speaking), so no major surprise there.

The rest of your post is really repellent and worryingly un-self-aware.

Re video games vs books, there are many many more books that have what I can't avoid calling "positive role models" for <i>both</i> young boys and young girls compared with video games.This is of course because video games historically have been a very male hobby.

Just take a look at the truly embarassing female character design in "non-kids" games.I always said I would rather have been caught looking at Playboy magazine than playing a Lara Croft game. Maybe the worst offenders are the Japanese fighting games - Ivy from Soul Calibur was frankly a disgrace. Bit of a shame cos it was actually a good game. I seem to remember the female characters in Virtua Fighter series used to be a bit less ridiculous?

It has just occurred to me that your nasty reactionary turn of phrase explains why you're in such a bad mood. Sorry your candidate got "beaten like a girl", Telekinesis. Have you considered "taking it like a man"?

As a father of two daughters myself, I have to ask, why would it be inappropriate to compliment a girl for being big and strong? I certainly don't want mine growing up small and weak, or wanting to be that way. Sitting in a castle waiting for a plumber or whatever to rescue you doesn't strike me as a very fulfilling role to play. Maybe instead of simply accepting these "corrections", it would be better to question them.

It is inappropriate because the people in a position to judge said so. Really you can take that at face value. If I needled somebody and they said Ow, that hurts, would we need to question whether that was really painful to them? Could I argue with them on grounds that the experience of pain is mostly mental, in the anticipation of, reaction to, and memory of it? That they should evaluate and subscribe to a different paradigm and threshold of discomfort?

What the situation I describe and your response illustrates is this: You can't give anyone a gendered compliment anymore without half weighing in that it's inappropriate and the other half saying that thinking that's inappropriate is inappropriate. Putting forth a meaningless compliment (you're a very pretty little girl!) results in you being at the center of an hour-long argument. Changing the hero of a game from boy to girl, for the private entertainment and social education of a girl, results in an hours-long argument.

I understand the desire to be more liberated individually. On the other hand it is quite paralyzing socially. You can't just give compliments anymore; everything is insulting to some individual, since there are no societal norms. I think our breakdown as a largely society is related to this. Red state blue state.

You're trolling, right? Actions not causing any dissent isn't the symptom of a functioning society – it's a symptom of a totalitarian dystopia. And when it comes to compliments, how about 'that's an awesome outfit'?

So in a functioning society, the only way to avoid dissent and criticism for your words and actions is to say and do nothing. (I would disagree with you here: doing nothing will also get you criticized.)

I therefore stand by my diagnosis of societal paralysis. (Or maybe we are developing into a culture of sociopaths who ignore the dissent and criticism of others while we do what we want.)

Putting forth a meaningless compliment (you're a very pretty little girl!) results in you being at the center of an hour-long argument. Changing the hero of a game from boy to girl, for the private entertainment and social education of a girl, results in an hours-long argument.

"a pretty little girl" is quite a badly phrased compliment. How about "that's a pretty dress/ribbon/tshirt"?The 1st complement addresses something that is not to the individual's credit. It is also praising a criterion that people should not really be judged by, while I do realise that they *will* be judged by it, especially as they get older. Why drum into children's heads so early?

If I were a parent of a young daughter I would note if someone was complimenting their looks as opposed to the nice party dress or whatever. Interestingly I wouldn't complain to them about it, out of a wish to avoid social embarassment. I actually doubt that you have got into these arguments, because most people will go a long way to avoid them. But you might live in the front lines of the American culture war?

As a father of two daughters myself, I have to ask, why would it be inappropriate to compliment a girl for being big and strong? I certainly don't want mine growing up small and weak, or wanting to be that way. Sitting in a castle waiting for a plumber or whatever to rescue you doesn't strike me as a very fulfilling role to play. Maybe instead of simply accepting these "corrections", it would be better to question them.

It is inappropriate because the people in a position to judge said so. Really you can take that at face value. If I needled somebody and they said Ow, that hurts, would we need to question whether that was really painful to them? Could I argue with them on grounds that the experience of pain is mostly mental, in the anticipation of, reaction to, and memory of it? That they should evaluate and subscribe to a different paradigm and threshold of discomfort?

What the situation I describe and your response illustrates is this: You can't give anyone a gendered compliment anymore without half weighing in that it's inappropriate and the other half saying that thinking that's inappropriate is inappropriate. Putting forth a meaningless compliment (you're a very pretty little girl!) results in you being at the center of an hour-long argument. Changing the hero of a game from boy to girl, for the private entertainment and social education of a girl, results in an hours-long argument.

I understand the desire to be more liberated individually. On the other hand it is quite paralyzing socially. You can't just give compliments anymore; everything is insulting to some individual, since there are no societal norms. I think our breakdown as a largely society is related to this. Red state blue state.

You're trolling, right? Actions not causing any dissent isn't the symptom of a functioning society – it's a symptom of a totalitarian dystopia. And when it comes to compliments, how about 'that's an awesome outfit'?

So in a functioning society, the only way to avoid dissent and criticism for your words and actions is to say and do nothing. (I would disagree with you here: doing nothing will also get you criticized.)

I therefore stand by my diagnosis of societal paralysis. (Or maybe we are developing into a culture of sociopaths who ignore the dissent and criticism of others while we do what we want.)

There is no societal paralysis. There is individual action.

A father works to make the world better for his daughter.

There is no hour long argument. It is done.

That people criticize him after the fact is irrelevant. He has made the world he wants his daughter to live in.

First and foremost, props to superdad. I hope I can do something half that cool for my kids (when I have them.)

Secondly, I think there's nothing wrong with him transforming a game in a way that he feels will benefit the development of his daughter's image of women (and thus, self image.) It's never too early to start with those sorts of things, either.

Third, in terms of balance between male and female characters, I think there's a huge gap. Uncommon is the realistic female heroine who doesn't have an entire team of people devoted to improving game physics simply for the purpose of making her breast movements appear more natural.

Lastly:

Telekenisis wrote:

That is a Selective Service (It sure is selective, being only males) registration card. Young males in the United States (and similarly many nations around the world) are required to register for selective service when they reach the age of 18. Failing to register can limit college options and financial aid etc, it can also be a felony with a $250,000 fine. Selective Service is basically the military draft system, but inactivated in that nobody is drafted (yet). Basically, young men are required to register as slaves and cannon fodder, but not woman, just like Casey Johnson here. Instead she spends her time writing articles like this.

Failing to register also means you cant register for a drivers licence, state issue i.d., voter registration, new social security card, name change, and the list goes on. Anything you register for via the government will be backchecked to ensure the male is in the selective service. <-----Notice that is some serious shit. Men do not have equal rights in any way shape or form.

Thats a complex and convoluted issue involving everything from reproduction of the species to facilities considerations to good ol' fashioned bigotry. But never fear, women will eventually have to share the "burden" of selective service with us men.

In the meantime, while you burn your jock strap and weather the injustice of a higher likelihood of a military or workplace death owing to the pecker that was forced upon you without your consent, I would request that you stop denigrating women who actively support equal rights and, in doing so, further society toward correcting the very injustice you whine about.

As an aside: If you equate defending your country in a time of great need to slavery, feel free to let the door hit you in the ass on your way to Greenland. I hear they don't have a military.

Boys get to be Cookie Monster. Girls get to be, well, I don't know what that even is. It looks like she skinned Cookie Monster and made a hat and dress out of him. I don't disagree with the principle, but I don't see why girls can't just be Cookie Monster.

I don't see your point, she can wear either costume, and girls wear boys stuff all the time.

My daughter (7) seems rather picky in what she will wear, she likes ponies, birds, rainbows, bunnies and pretty things, I don't think we could get her to wear a cookie monster costume, or a monster costume of any kind. Believe it or not, understand it or not, girls and boys usually have different preferences in many things. This is neither right nor wrong, it just is.

Rest of the post is obvious troll, but man, this part. The stories my female friends have told me of the doll orgies they put on and the torrid affairs all the Barbie cast of characters had would be quite appropriate to any given porn site. Sheesh!

Some of those dolls later made a movie, a somewhat tawdry tale named, what was it, oh yes, Team America.

I don't see your point, she can wear either costume, and girls wear boys stuff all the time.Believe it or not, understand it or not, girls and boys usually have different preferences in many things. This is neither right nor wrong, it just is.

While this is undoubtedly true, (male infants are more likely to go for the wheeled toys etc. in psychology studies)

I want to quote Eddie Izzard,

"women (and to a broad extent girls) have total clothing rights"A man or boy who wears a skirt or dress is a sexual deviant, a woman or girl can wear whatever she wants and is not judged on those gendered criteria to anywhere near the same extent.

Video games started out by mostly catering to boys. This has stuck around, and rightly so, since female gamers are less common.

There may be a reason for this that you could possibly be overlooking perhaps? As you said, videogames mostly cater to boys.

But video games do not "cater" to anyone, like all software they write for the market. The larger the market, the more players and the wider the quality and quantity of games (and spreadsheets, and databases, etc...). Today (as in the past) the majority of the game market is boys and male teens. Many apparently keep playing long into adulthood (I occasionally hear of console widows and I may even know of a divorce caused by such, although I only know what I heard indirectly). If there was a large market for games for girls, the same game producers would write the games that girls would buy, the power of the almighty dollar. But there does not seem to be such a market, or it's very small.

The point is that the market is driven by demand, producers only create a product, if they create a product for which there is no demand, they go broke. That's happened numerous times BTW. Before you create a product, you need to make sure there is a market for it.

Quote:

So one father is changing that for his daughter.

No, not really. If he is marketing this hacked game, Nintendo's lawyers may knock on his door.

I don't see your point, she can wear either costume, and girls wear boys stuff all the time.Believe it or not, understand it or not, girls and boys usually have different preferences in many things. This is neither right nor wrong, it just is.

While this is undoubtedly true, (male infants are more likely to go for the wheeled toys etc. in psychology studies)

I want to quote Eddie Izzard,

"women (and to a broad extent girls) have total clothing rights"A man or boy who wears a skirt or dress is a sexual deviant, a woman or girl can wear whatever she wants and is not judged on those gendered criteria to anywhere near the same extent.

My guess is that the down-voting on your post has nothing to do with sexist trolls.

I reckon the post is being down-voted because it basically just said "me too" and thus could be seen as adding no value to the discussion. Then, your edits basically just whinge about being down-voted, and you accuse your detractors of being sexist. In my view, those edits are inflammatory, and are the primary reason for the down-voting.

Presumably this would be accomplished by replacing female characters with male characters somehow.

Haven't you noticed that female characters are disproportionately subordinate?

The point is that protagonists in video games and many other popular media under-represent women and girls.Some, myself included, see that as a potential problem and would like to see that changed.

It does seem to be that a young girl can be a "tomboy" and face far less parental pressure and social flak than an "effeminate" boy. So there is clearly not a simple equivalence of possible roles for boys and girls.

But the dearth of leadership role models for girls still should be considered.

"a pretty little girl" is quite a badly phrased compliment. How about "that's a pretty dress/ribbon/tshirt"?The 1st complement addresses something that is not to the individual's credit. It is also praising a criterion that people should not really be judged by, while I do realise that they *will* be judged by it, especially as they get older. Why drum into children's heads so early?

If I were a parent of a young daughter I would note if someone was complimenting their looks as opposed to the nice party dress or whatever. Interestingly I wouldn't complain to them about it, out of a wish to avoid social embarassment. I actually doubt that you have got into these arguments, because most people will go a long way to avoid them. But you might live in the front lines of the American culture war?

First, I would not say "that's a pretty dress," for the reason I do not have conversations with dresses. I try to compliment the person, not the object. Perhaps you could argue one could compliment the ownership of the object, i.e. "you have a pretty dress," but I've heard from people who feel that sort of comment breeds materialism in the impressionable. Then there are people like you who feel describing people as pretty breeds vanity. And if I were to call a child smart or talented, that's what causes "special snowflake" syndrome people rant on internet message boards all the time about. And so on.

And no, I don't get into "these" arguments. In real life, someone tells me not to talk about their daughter or son a certain way, that's the end of it, no if's but's or maybe's. Obviously the argument could continue indefinitely, but who really wants to get into it on a street, in a store, or in a stadium? It's only here, anonymous and online, I actually get to argue leisurely with all comers about how this filtering of smalltalk might be deleterious for society, particularly those who wouldn't mind interacting with others instead of being left alone. Because while I am perfectly happy not to cause offense, and am genuinely sorry I gave somebody's child the wrong idea through compliment, I can't keep dossiers in my mind of what everyone's preference is. So in the end the safe thing is just not to engage in conversation.

It's amazing how threatened some of the boys in this thread are by a simple act of love from a father.

Having said that I'm not sure a female Link really works in the Zelda storyline, and you don't mess with the classics, as a rule. Each Zelda game is basically a re-telling of a classic fantasy love story between the humble boy, a princess, and the big bad dude trying destroy the world (and their love of course). Recasting Link as a female detracts from that storyline (without getting into gender issues and LGBT stuff hopefully). I don't have a problem with what the guy did, but I think I'd stress the other, well-written positive female role-models in these games to my 4yo daughter instead.

Anyway, good to see the Wind Waker love, still one of the best Zeldas IMO.

There's no "love story" in Twilight Princess, Wind Waker, or Ocarina of Time.

Recasting Link as female does nothing to Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, or Ocarina of Time.

That's certainly not how I recall OoT, although I'll admit it's been a while. From recollection there was a fair amount of interaction between Zelda and Link which could only be described as romantic, and the ending was a fairly poignant moment where, even though they'd come to have feelings for each other, Zelda knew that she had to send him back to his childhood self (whereupon he is childhood friends with young Zelda again).

Don't make me replay this to prove internet points!

At any rate, there's no way to re-jig all of the characters, roles etc to cater to a male and female protagonist without butchering the whole Zelda metastory, IMO. Also remember that these are coming from Japan, which is very culturally conservative.

There's nothing inherently wrong with a story which has gender-stereotypical roles in it - especially one which DOES have strong female characters. Provided there's some diversity in the market, which I'm all for. Let's have some more Beyond Good & Evil, for a start!

I like the story, but this quote ruined it for me, it deeply bothers me. It is essentially declaring the Zelda games to be oppressive to women simply because the protagonist is male.

I fail to see how the protagonist not being a certain gender equates to oppression of that gender, I don't see how this is fair to the series, to Nintendo, or to the LGBT community that still shows tolerance towards straight, cis-gendered protagonists.

By this logic, the modified game with a straight female protagonist is treating males and the transgendered (who are rarely represented) as second-class citizens.

This quote implies a deep intolerance, a politically correct intolerance, but an intolerance none the less, it is one thing to notice that a character doesn't represent you, it is another to imply a game is oppressive if the protagonist doesn't represent every group, and there are allot of groups to represent.

Judging from other comments I can expect nothing but downvotes and strawmans for daring to scrutinize this, but I don't care, do your worst.

I like the story, but this quote ruined it for me, it deeply bothers me. It is essentially declaring the Zelda games to be oppressive to women simply because the protagonist is male.

No.

It doesn't pick on Zelda in particular - it describes the entire gaming landscape (gaming is Dad's favourite pastime, not Zelda) as being fairly unwelcoming to (or at the very least, unsupportive of) girls and their self image. No one here is really picking on individual games that make character choices appropriate to their stories (despite the ham-fisted, personally affronted misunderstanding rampant in this thread). But seen en masse there is an obvious imbalance in the gender inclusion of video games (again, for obvious economic/demographic reasons).

The dad here isn't slating the entire industry for that imbalance, he's doing his small part by addressing it for his daughter, that she may enjoy the game in the same way he remembers doing: by connecting with the character and feeling part of the adventure.

I don't see your point, she can wear either costume, and girls wear boys stuff all the time.Believe it or not, understand it or not, girls and boys usually have different preferences in many things. This is neither right nor wrong, it just is.

While this is undoubtedly true, (male infants are more likely to go for the wheeled toys etc. in psychology studies)

I want to quote Eddie Izzard,

"women (and to a broad extent girls) have total clothing rights"A man or boy who wears a skirt or dress is a sexual deviant, a woman or girl can wear whatever she wants and is not judged on those gendered criteria to anywhere near the same extent.

Exactly, a girl can wear pretty much whatever she wants.

The restrictions are on what boys (and men) can do.

You think I don't mind that, either, for my son?

They both face scorn for extending gender norms, the difference is that my son's self worth isn't denigrated by the lack of fashion choices.

That just means you don't know anything about child or identity development. What that girl experiences in her first years determines who she is for the rest of her life, how her mind processes inputs, how she views the world around her. Taking extra steps to make sure she develops a sense of self worth is important.

Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's objectively "getting out of hand."

So your argument is that this girl's future path in life will be greatly enhanced because she was exposed to a warped piece of video game fiction at a young age? You, sir, are the one with comprehension problems.

The gender obsession has been out of hand for awhile. We see loads of groups such as "women in science" and "women in engineering" and "women in business" assembling to fight the big battle ..... against what? It's not a secret that women entering these (and other) male dominated professions often receive preferential treatment in terms of securing employment. It's ridiculous to operate under the pretext that a statistically low percentage of females in various fields is attributed to discrimination and oppression when in actual fact women simply don't want to work in those fields.

When I read the comments section on this article or the recent article about banning sexism in Halo 4, I get really depressed. There seem to be so many people that do not grasp how women are still being marginalized and treated badly in video games (and generally in our society).How many video games are there that depict a healthy role model for women? And how many are there where women just serve as eye candy for male gamers? That relation is just very disproportionate.This kind of inherent sexism goes by unnoticed most of the time and if it is pointed out (such as in the two articles here on Ars) there is a huge fuss and sometimes even outrage. It shows that we still have a long way to go.

Even if we look at one of the games that got mentioned in this thread a few times as a good example for treating both genders equally, the Mass Effect series, I could argue that it is not true in reality.(Disclaimer: I love Mass Effect and I think it did mostly a good job in picturing women throughout the game).Surely femShep is shown as a badass, strong woman and exactly as capable as manShep. But she is shown as capable because she acts exactly like a man, she is not given her own distinct role as a strong woman.In the first two installations of the game she does not even get advertised and only when Bioware recognized from player feedback that she was quite popular they gave her an own unique avatar and screentime on the box and advertising material for the third installment.I was also quite annoyed with the change in the models they used for Liara and Ashley Williams. Was it really necessary to give both of them a "boob job"? In the first game the both shared the standard female body model, which was pleasantly realistic in the cup-size department, but as soon as they got their respective individual body model they both needed to go shopping for new underwear.

That's the kind of small things I am talking about that go by unnoticed mostly. Even in a game that makes (imho) a visible effort on showing both genders equally well or equally bad, I can still find underlying themes of sexism. Don't get me wrong here, I am far from claiming that Mass Effect is a sexist game, I am just pointing out that even in a game that goes a long shot of not being sexistic you will find sexist undertones. And now go for games that do not even try.

We have to realize that TV, media and games still sport a female role model of being mostly "passiv" and "to be acted with" (rather positively in the role of the damsel in distress or much more negatively in the role of a sex object), while men are mostly shown as "activ" and "to be the one who acts". Please sit back for a minute, think about it and tell me it's not true. And when a women is shown as "acting", she mostly acts in a "manly" way.

A society where both genders understand themselves as equally "activ" or "passiv", without objectification of human beings can only be better. And a dad that goes out on a limb to achieve this for his daughter by editing a video game can only be applauded.

That just means you don't know anything about child or identity development. What that girl experiences in her first years determines who she is for the rest of her life, how her mind processes inputs, how she views the world around her. Taking extra steps to make sure she develops a sense of self worth is important.

Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's objectively "getting out of hand."

So your argument is that this girl's future path in life will be greatly enhanced because she was exposed to a warped piece of video game fiction at a young age? You, sir, are the one with comprehension problems.

The gender obsession has been out of hand for awhile. We see loads of groups such as "women in science" and "women in engineering" and "women in business" assembling to fight the big battle ..... against what? It's not a secret that women entering these (and other) male dominated professions often receive preferential treatment in terms of securing employment. It's ridiculous to operate under the pretext that a statistically low percentage of females in various fields is attributed to discrimination and oppression when in actual fact women simply don't want to work in those fields.

Maybe they don't "want to work in those fields", as you put it, because they had no positive role models in their childhood they can relate to?That's the whole point being made here. Girls are shown to be pretty, cute princesses. They are not shown to be a heroine, an engineer, a scientist or whatever. That is what this dad tried to change.

The gender obsession has been out of hand for awhile. We see loads of groups such as "women in science" and "women in engineering" and "women in business" cropping up to fight the big battle ..... against what? It's not a secret that women entering these (and other) male dominated professions often receive more favorable treatment than men do in terms of securing employment. It's ridiculous to pretend that university enrollment in various fields by women is low because they're somehow being discriminated against when in actual fact they simply don't want to work in those fields.

Thank you for posting this. I mean that sincerely. You've exposed the real meat and potatoes of the discussion. The ugly truth is that, for some people, encouraging playing a (non-male-fantasy) female hero in a video game is just a part of a wider fear they have of encouraging female scientists, engineers, businesspeople, and presumably to enter other bastions of male dominance. You have neatly summarized *why* what this one dad did has caused a quasi-flamewar out of all proportion to the mere act of modding a video game.

Many of us trying to raise our daughters to be women with real choices later on in life, believe that this kind of encouragement is necessary. This is because despite your (unsubstantiated) claim that they're not discriminated against, they are. Example: according to the U.S. Dept. of Labor (http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswom2009.pdf), on average women earned only 80.2% of men's wages in 2009... but of the fields you mentioned, only one has a wage gap (barely) above the average: engineering ("Architecture and engineering occupations"): 80.5%. Meanwhile the other two are a bit worse and a lot worse: science ("Life, physical, and social science occupations"): 79.0% and business ("Management, business, and financial operations occupations"): 72.7%. It's a 30,000-foot view, but it does suggest women scientists and women businesspeople are treated even more poorly than other women workers--and that's just on the measure of wages, which are (relatively) easy to measure. Given that fact, is it surprising that women "simply don't want to work in those fields"?

Edit: typosEdit2: to clarify, the numbers are from Table 2 in that pdf.Edit3: to further clarify, the 80.2% overall average is from Table 1; the rest are from Table 2.

How about just letting your daughter decide whether she wants to play a game with a male persona instead of shoehorning her into her pre-defined gender role?

I like this. This explains how I feel without pissing off the masses.

We choose our own hobbies, why are we suddenly surprised when they don't always match up against other people? My wife also likes videogames, she plays The Sims, facebook games, and MMO's. If i took Battlefield 3 and changed the main character to a female-relateable female she's still not going to give a shit In the same vein I wouldnt suddenly load up viva pinata if you could plant strippers in the garden.

I think it'd be offensive to either of us if something like this was commercially done, as it would be pandering and reductionist to think the reason its not interesting to us is the gender of the protagonist.

Obviously off topic but, if viva pinata let you plant strippers in the garden, it might get my attention. I mean seriously, blooming strippers? That interests nobody?

I think in many or even most instances if you change the sex of the MC you'd have to make adjustments to the story to make the new MC fit. I played a bit of Bastion and the MC feels very masculine even though I don't remember anything anywhere telling me it's a guy. All the references to him call him "the kid". If he was a girl I'd expect some changes to verious parts of the game.

I played some Beyond Good and Evil, a game where the main character is girl.

Thinking about it some more, maybe it's just that the game and story would feel different depending on the sex of the MC but there would be no need to make adjustments to them. I'm not sure. A game featuring "adult themes" would more likely need adjustments depending on the situations and supporting characters, but even then there's probably not too much that would need changing.

Interesting food for thought.

Anyway, I would recommend Beyond Good and Evil. I really enjoy taking photos, although the stealth part is a bit nerve racking for me.

The picture leading this article is an example of inverting the original mistake instead of addressing it.

We can be sensitive to both sexes by presenting things in a more gender-neutral way. Why not say, instead, "On a certain island, the custom is to dress children in green as they come of age." Excluding boys here is just introducing the same problem from a new direction.

If indeed it is true that having the hero of Zelda be a boy makes girls second-class citizens, (as the rather inflammatory subtitle of this story implies) then having the heroine only be a girl makes boys second-class citizens.

The picture leading this article is an example of inverting the original mistake instead of addressing it.

The article clearly mentions there were space constraints limiting the father's creativity.

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We can be sensitive to both sexes by presenting things in a more gender-neutral way. Why not say, instead, "On a certain island, the custom is to dress children in green as they come of age." Excluding boys here is just introducing the same problem from a new direction.

Because there wasn't enough room. Given that the original game already caters to boys, then there is no real concern of excluding them. The goal isn't to be "sensitive", it's to allow the father to introduce adventure, heroism, and bravery with a female lead.

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If indeed it is true that having the hero of Zelda be a boy makes girls second-class citizens, (as the rather inflammatory subtitle of this story implies) then having the heroine only be a girl makes boys second-class citizens.

So what? The father can always revert the game as needed if he has a son he wants to experience the game too. The point isn't to denigrate boys in favor of girls, it is to provide equal screen time to girls.

To put another way: say male leads outnumber female leads 20:1, the dad just made it 20:2 (since the original version of the game is still available). You're suggesting instead making it 19:1 instead by removing gender, which isn't actually the point in the first place.

He wants his daughter to see a girl. He wants a proxy for his child in the game.

I challenge anyone to find a single girl they know who grew up playing video games starring mostly male characters who grew up feeling inferior to men because of it. I dare you. Just one.

I found me.

At the very least, it certainly contributed to one's sense that she should feel inferior. When I was a child, I hated, hated, hated other stupid girls and all their stupid girly things, and I would insist that I was somehow actually a boy. I didn't grow out of the vestiges of that crap until I was in my teens.

It is beyond fecking irritating, those times you're not simply being ignored, to be continually cast as a plot device rather than as someone who can play an active role. This should be obvious.

^Quoting this because it doesn't deserve to be lost on the previous page.^ Now keep this lady's perspective in mind as I walk through and try to explain some things in response to the common objections here.

Brass2TheMax wrote:

Don't get me wrong, I have absolutely no problem with what he's done for his daughter, I even said above that I understood why he did it, I just didn't agree with his outlook on how, if he didn't make the changes, his daughter would somehow be affected by thinking that "girls don't get to be the hero". That part was bullshit, the rest was okay.

It's not bullshit when you consider the dearth of female player characters in gaming that compare to Link. What other games could he play with her instead, if he was looking to replace Wind Waker with a game that offers her a female player character role to step into?

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Also, I hope you're not implying my reaction was knee-jerk. If so, I think you'd better learn what that means.

I meant what I said. You're skipping right past everything and dismissing the argument, raised by the father in this very story, as bullshit. You even cite a major source of the problem and act like it's not a problem. You don't seem to have given this issue much consideration, just stereotyped it and moved on. "Games are made for guys, you're reading too much into it!" is a pretty sorry excuse for critical thinking.

FrostX wrote:

Quote:"Dad's favorite pastime shouldn't treat girls like second-class citizens."Quote:I’m not having my daughter growing up thinking girls don’t get to be the hero.Quote:Furthermore, no one should have to deny their daughters a healthy education in the wonders of Zelda because male-oriented text might deal a blow to girls' sense of self-worth.

After words like these it goes beyond the love and effort of a father. And merits a discussion from all sides.

So let's look at the larger context. How many female Link-type characters are there in gaming? How are most extant female characters in games depicted? What do they do? How many are playable? How many are playable with a toddler? Realistically, what are the options for people who want the same thing he wanted but don't want to hack a game to get it? And why are their options so limited compared to people who can pick just about any game with a male PC hero?

There is a huge imbalance here. Girls and the parents who want to support them by giving them diverse heroic role models suitable to their level of maturity don't have the same options as boys and their parents when it comes to videogames.

Nijyo wrote:

The main problem most people are objecting to is the comment that basically implies there's no female heroes in gaming that the guy made, and it's sort of spiraled out of control from there, but the more rational response to it is "Of course there are female heroes in gaming, Link just happens to be a male hero, but even in the same game, Zelda is clearly a hero, and a capable person, as well."

When something like 95 out of a hundred heroes in games "just happen to be male," it's not exactly "just happening" anymore. When most female characters in games are relegated to roles that revolve around supporting or being an objective for the male player character, it's not exactly "just happening" either. There is an underlying reason for this massive over-representation and schismatic characterization along sex lines, just like there are underlying reasons for the massive over-representation of men in the US Congress (female representatives didn't even reach double-digit percentages until the mid 1990s, and they are still nowhere near parity).

And as for Zelda specifically? No, she's never been depicted as being as capable as Link. That's why she's always the one being rescued. Always. Every game that starts to make progress on this inevitably shies away from it by the end, turning Zelda into someone to be rescued, someone who can't or doesn't go toe-to-toe with Ganon the way Link can and does. Zelda journeyed as Sheik for ten years while Link was locked away in the Chamber of Time? When he gets out, she drops her masculine persona, gets trapped in a crystal, and turns into a gaspy escort mission. Wind Waker Zelda lives the life of a pirate tomboy? When Ganon finds out, she's kidnapped as a damsel in distress. The next game turns her to stone and Link has to save her again. Twilight Princess? Zelda is not just his prisoner, she's literally Ganon's puppet. At least that game has Midna. Skyward Sword? Sleeping beauty, then soul-stolen DiD. Spirit Tracks? Zelda is finally a playable character that's capable of kicking butt, but only because she's having an OoBE and needs Link to reunite her spirit and body.

There is not a single Nintendo game featuring Link and Zelda where Zelda is not kidnapped, cursed, held captive, or otherwise personally imperiled and Link has to save her, unless you count Smash Bros. Zelda is never the hero in the same way that Link is the hero. In which games are the female characters the hero the way Link is the hero? How many of them are there? Why do things "just happen" this way?

If she can't read why didn't he just pretend a main character was a girl so that when game said "he" he could read "she" to his daughter?

Anyway, this type of crap is really getting a little annoying. Yesterday I read an article where Brussels is proposing to remove some books from school reading lists just because they describe "traditional family" where wife stays at home and takes care of the household and husband works.

Even if we look at one of the games that got mentioned in this thread a few times as a good example for treating both genders equally, the Mass Effect series, I could argue that it is not true in reality.(Disclaimer: I love Mass Effect and I think it did mostly a good job in picturing women throughout the game).Surely femShep is shown as a badass, strong woman and exactly as capable as manShep. But she is shown as capable because she acts exactly like a man, she is not given her own distinct role as a strong woman.

I think that the problem is that we are so used to men "acting strong" that we think that women would "act strong" in a completely different way. All the strong woman I know act as what you would call "male strong".There is no "male strong" or "female strong" there is only "strong".

If indeed it is true that having the hero of Zelda be a boy makes girls second-class citizens, (as the rather inflammatory subtitle of this story implies) then having the heroine only be a girl makes boys second-class citizens.

No, you misunderstood. Read the sentence again: "She's not an NPC, and Dad's favorite pastime shouldn't treat girls like second-class citizens." Simply having the hero of Zelda be a boy does not make girls second-class citizens. Rather, gaming as a whole makes girls second-class citizens.

bombardier wrote:

If she can't read why didn't he just pretend a main character was a girl so that when game said "he" he could read "she" to his daughter?

Read the article: "Because Hoye's daughter can't yet read, Hoye has been reading the on-screen dialogue aloud to her and diligently transliterating the gendered language from male to female on the fly as they traverse the game's Great Sea together. To make this process smoother, Hoye eventually decided to hack away at the actual text of the story, producing a female-oriented version by altering the game's data files."

Wow, that's political correctness to the point of super retardation. Let me get this straight... he changed none of the dialog, none of the plot, none of the core themes or events, not of the more meaningful elements of the game, except the gender references. So in his own mind he believes that because the main character does not have the same set of matching genitalia, a female is less able to relate regardless of context. That is so beyond absurd and shallow, I don't even know where to begin. Perhaps he should also get a gender reassignment surgery so that his daughter will know that fathers can be female as well.

Perhaps these politically correct busybody idiots should focus less on what genitalia a protagonist in entertainment has, and more on cultivating their childs skills and ambitions. If you think a videogame is teaching your children that they can't be hero because they are not the same sex as the protagonist, you are a politically correct moron with social control issues. That's just a fact. And by emphasizing these shallow distinctions, you only serve to reinforce these discrepancies.

These is no issue with a system that allows women to do what they are qualified and passionate to do. There is no issue in ensuring that women are given the same opportunities as males. However, I DO see a problem with trying to make women interested in certain subjects by creating artificial incentives under the misguided notion that women are exactly like men apart from cultural programming, and I do see a problem with this constant blame of white men.

I agree. There is this perverse politically-correct obsession to erase gender differences by social engineering. It completely neglects the innate physiological and psychological differences between men and women. Even in the animal kingdom gender roles exist, yet, these people believe that for humans gender roles and differing behavior among men and women is all due to the white male patriarchy. It's complete lunacy and not even based on the proper scientific method.

I encourage everyone to watch the Norwegian documentary series Hjernevask on Youtube. The first episode is on gender differences. The host interview both biologists and sociologist and reviews some of the studies on gender. It's quite fascinating to see the interview of the sociologists. Their Scientific process is more akin to Creationism (selectively picking facts to drive a conclusion) than proper science (taking the facts to deduce a conclusion).

Maybe I'm missing something, but if she can't read then what's even the point of the mod?

Early reading with kids is always a good thing, if the kid is picking up what Daddy says and trying to match it with the words on screen, why not make the words actually match. A small thing, but you'd be surprised how quickly kids can pick up on little things.

jackstrop wrote:

Not that I'm saying there's something wrong with what he did, just that it seems rather ineffectual and pointless compared with things he could be doing if he really wants to empower her.

Every technology blog or site has articles relating to someone doing something "pointless", popping a full N64 into an N64 controller or something else geekcraft relating. I don't see anyone berating them for doing what they do, why are so many posts berating this parent for doing something similar.

What this parent did was cute, a bit geeky, and apparently evidence that they are aware that their child may face certain gender related obstacles in growing up. The kid is only three odd years old, at this stage in their life I'm not sure what else the parent might do to "empower" their child.

I try for a balance in my daughter's play time too, I don't mind so much if she wants to play with characters in a house or cafe, but I encourage her to build them out of Lego too. Granted, that's left her building cafes where Daleks and Cybermen make human hybrids as Weeping Angels look on, but that's beside the point.